Locke on The Geopolitics of Oil in the Middle East

Locke criticises US interventionalism in Middle
East

Green Party MP Keith Locke
criticised US involvement in the Middle East, at a speech
delivered at the Wellington Public Library last night.

The
speech, entitled The Geopolitics of Oil, dealt
specifically with US policy in the Middle East and claimed
that the region is of strategic interest to the US because
of its vast oil reserves.

Mr Locke argued that with the
approach of peak oil we can expect an even more aggressive
approach by the US in securing dominance over the
region.

He claimed that the invasion of Iraq was not to
set up a democratic government, but to secure control over
oil in Kuwait, and to further entrench a US presence in the
Middle East

Mr Locke used the USs refusal to acknowledge
Palestine’s democratically elected Hamas as a legitimate
political party as an example of its very selective belief
in democracy, and further claimed that “in some ways
Israel has been America’s proxy in the region”.

He
further argued that the US has strategic ties with Saudi
Arabia’s monarchy, who have been criticized by groups such
as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for their
human rights abuses, particularly with regard to their
treatment of women.

The current situation between US and
Iran was also on Mr Locke’s agenda.

“The CIA and the
International Atomic Energy Agency have both said that Iran
does not have nuclear weapons.

“The US provides
significant financial support to Israel, which has some 200
nuclear weapons and is the only country with nuclear weapons
in the Middle East.

“Some people might be crazy enough
to think that this is about Iran having the third highest
oil reserves in the region,” said Mr Locke.

The
benefactors of oil production in the Middle East were also
discussed.

“If these countries are oil rich, then you
would expect the people to be rich. That is not the case and
what we see is money in the hands of elites and
corporates,” he said.

British Petroleum currently has
US$209 billion dollars in assets, while Exxon Mobil has
US$439 billion in assets.

In the final part of his speech
Mr Locke looked at world wide military spending (US$1200
billion) in comparison to world wide spending (US$60
billion) on renewable resources.

“If we inverted that,
then we would be a long way to achieving a sustainable
future.”

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